Welcome to Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of the Haddock Clan, the creation of Belgian cartoonist Hergé.
Some Manor-keeping notes:
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Enjoy your stay! There are some fuzzy slippers over there somewhere, too.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Loving on American Idyll

I've thought of his offerings there as collage, pastiche, satire, tour à tour. To create, to decorate, to commentate, to put all in question, sometimes to scream, sometimes to laugh, I love watching what he does there (and ruuscal, too!).

But this one... yeah, big nods to Dylan, thank you to Joan, appropriate recollections of their story, a few wonderings about this convergence and that... but mostly, this, to me, is TW.

Here, as a temptation, is one of his photos from this post -- stolen. I didn't ask permission. It's his, and it might be him in it, I dunno. Or her. A pilgrim. Go now and enjoy the rest -- don't do as I did and steal.

Since I am for some despicable reason so overwrought this day, I hope the American Idyll team won't mind me swiping a few pics of the feline Poncho. Poncho reminds me, like a punch in the stomach and a tweak of the cheek, of our dear Little Boy, better known as Uncle Kitty Big Balls. It's uncanny -- sometimes more in the attitude than in appearance, sometimes I actually have to look twice. We miss Little Boy, and my dear Sam-I-Am's loss is palpable as the anniversary of euthanizing him arrives. He was my Love Buddy. I got more (and better!) kisses from Sammy than from any man I ever smooched. But he did get a slightly unnerving ardor in the eyes that made you know Sammy was more Casanova than gigolo. Discrete, but whoa... a true lover. Smooches to you out there, my Sammy.

Uncle Kitty Big Balls was truly Fred's boy -- they were pals. "They" were the reason I realized recently that naming Buddy "Buddy" was a huge error on my part. UKBB was Fred's "buddy," and answered to it.

Anyway, the history of how we ended up with Marmy Fluffy Butt, Uncle Kitty Big Ball's sister, who gave birth to Dobby... it's fascinating reading and THIS POST sums it up as well as I can sum up any darned thing.

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

I am a retired French prof -- retired due to disablity, not age, and certainly not by choice. Teaching was my raison d'être. My world becomes more confined and defined with each passing day.

I hope that this blog, by its general silliness, alone, will prove a defense against the painful pressure of such implosions.

My interests are legion, but ultimately ego-driven, as will soon be embarrassingly evident. One of the more arcane? A love for the works of Georges Prosper Remi -- best known as Hergé. If you've forgotten the gist of Hergé's work, HERE is a list of characters and adventures to consult. How we wish, sometimes, that we had been in Hergé's Head (la Tête de Hergé), back in the heyday of Tintin, Snowy, Professor Calculus, Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond), and all the gang.

Still, it is a childhood dream come true to be living in Captain Haddock's ancestral manor, Marlinspike Hall, with my partner Fred, La Bonne et Belle Operatic Diva, Bianca Castafiore, our pets, and a devoted Domestic Staff. Bianca and I can be so much alike, at times, in ways both endearing and alienating, that you'll wonder "Who is whom?" While she has titular control of elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle, I do most of the writing. If you would like to locate us on a map, it's easy: we are about a two hour drive west of the Lone Alp. Or you can use MapQuest.

Of course, even as the Milanese Nightingale regales us with longwinded tales of escapes from General Tapioca and poorly prepared pasta, saved by her beloved Captain and Tintin, even as she serenades us with that interminable Air des bijoux -- the threat of eviction looms over our heads, for we are neither manor born nor manor bred.

To stay in Captain Haddock's good graces and earn our keep, we strive to keep The Manor in tiptop shape, to keep the adventures to a minimum, and to be good neighbors to The Cistercians living just down the road, here in beautiful, magical Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs). You never know when The Captain might suddenly return from some mysterious nautical journey! The Castafiore trills merely at the thought; Fred, on the other hand, worries about the algae outbreak in the Moat, where our benefactor moors his mini-submarine fleet.

En tout cas...

Let me explain, at least, my blog title, Dear Reader:

Some years back, one early morning in Paris, bleary-eyed from a long flight, with hours yet to wait before I could check-in to my hotel (and perilously little money in my pocket), I stood perched against a stone wall overlooking the Seine.